


The Cuckoo Child

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1950's setting, Gen, NASA, Twins, alien assimilation, extra alien aliens, time skip, ufos and aliens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9215582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: On night in the mid 50's, two girls follow a light they see fall in the sky behind their house. What they find will alter their lives, and possibly the path of humanity.





	

Even though Lindy had the binoculars, it was Laurie who saw the ship first that night.

It was late summer, and there was a meteor shower that night. Lindy had asked for a telescope for Christmas the year before, and with the explanation that telescopes were very expensive, she had been given the binoculars. 

They worked pretty well, and her and Laurie had been up on the roof since the moon came out, eyes scanning the sky. It was August, and the twins’ science teacher Mr. Slovak had said that this week was one of the greatest meteor showers that could be easily seen from the earth. Lindy had been twitching to see since, and as soon as it had gotten dark she had dragged her sister up onto the roof to watch. 

Lindy had been staring up through the lenses, when she heard Laurie say, “Hey”. Figuring that she was just tired and wanted to get down and go to bed, Lindy ignored her until she heard the follow up “What’s the green thing?”

She turned to look at her sister, who was twisted and pointing at the sky behind the house. There was, indeed, a green light, slowly descending into the fields behind the Murphy’s property before disappearing into the horizon. It was oval shaped and seemed to be gray or silver beneath the sickly green glow. 

Lindy jumps up, slinging the binoculars around her neck, and starts climbing off the roof. 

“What are you doing?” Laurie yells, following her sister down. She let out an “oof” when she hit the ground, and Lindy was already halfway to the fence. Laurie huffed after her, despite Lindy always having her nose in a book, she was easily the more athletic of the twins. 

“Don’t you want to see what that was?” Lindy calls back over her shoulder. 

“We’re going to get in trouble!”

“Come on, Laurie, don’t let rules stop you from something great”. 

They were coming down the edge of a hill, where the dead late-summer grass shone in the moonlight before the field turned into twisted woods that marked the edge of the Murphy’s property. The land had previously been farmland, though it had gone unworked for many years.

Laurie’s feet ache. She had on her house shoes when they were on the roof, when Lindy was wearing her sneakers. The roots and rocks threaten to trip her, but while Laurie was never athletic, that didn’t mean she wasn’t graceful. 

Lindy’s ponytail was starting to come loose, but she kept moving. This was exactly the kind of thing she had been hoping to happen all summer, something exciting. 

The object from the sky landed in a clearing a few hundred feet into the trees. A crater formed around it when it hit, but not as large as one would expect from it’s size, Lindy reasoned that it must not having been traveling very fast when it landed. Once it landed, the green glow surrounding it shrank, and then disappeared, leaving an egg-shaped object about the size of a small car. It was silver- not shiny, worn. 

Lindy picks up a stick and pushes at the ridges that go around the object, seemingly separating it into two halves, it looked to her, like it might open along those lines. 

“Lindy what are you doing? That thing could be radioactive!” Laurie demanded, stepping back away from her sister. 

“If it’s radioactive, we’re already exposed. If it gives us superpowers, I want to fly.”

“But what if it’s not, what if whatever’s inside is what’s toxic, and you poking it makes it come and liquefy us or something?”

Lindy wrinkles her nose as the object doesn’t budge. She runs the stick underneath it, it’s stuck hard to the ground. It must be tremendously heavy. 

“Laurie, you’re so uncurious. It’s probably something from that army base over in Yellowtown. You remember that raving lunatic we saw there last year going on about flying saucers and little green men?”

And while Laurie still stands safely back, she does not run away. 

Nothing Lindy does has any kind of effect on the egg. She pokes it once for good measure, and it clangs, not unlike hitting one of the metal pans under the stove. 

“Maybe we should go get Mom and Dad” Laurie says, uncertain. The back of her neck is wet with sweat. 

“Or the police” Lindy reasons. “They might want to come out and see what it is”. 

Before either of them can get any further, the craft opens on it’s own. It opens with enough force that it pushes Lindy off her feet onto the ground. 

“Lindy!” 

Despite her own misgivings, Laurie runs back to help her sister up. 

“I’m fine”. 

The top of the egg-craft makes a cranking noise as it raises away from the bottom half in a full one-hundred and eighty degree. 

Like a plastic easter egg would open, Laurie thought. 

A blob doesn’t emerge from the craft like in the monster movie the twins had seen earlier that summer. Neither does an army of little green men like in a comic book. 

What did come out of the craft, looked almost to the twins like a cloud. 

Admittedly, neither of them had ever seemed a cloud that was almost purple before. A dark, inky purple nearly black. It didn’t move like a cloud either, rather like a swarm of bees. Lindy had been at a friend’s house the previous year, and the girl’s younger brother had poked a wasp’s nest and the bugs had swarmed him, seemingly moving as a whole instead of individuals. 

It hovered, outside the craft, in front of the twins, who stood frozen watching. 

Then it suddenly moved towards them, and both girls shriek, and turn to run away. 

It’s Laurie who gets the image in her mind She would have called it a thought, but thoughts to her meant words. This was, well, not even really a picture. An impression, a feeling. And that feeling was fear, pain, confusion. A plea, a cry for help. 

She reaches out to grab Lindy by the wrist, and pulls her back to face the craft. 

“Wait..” 

Then another image comes to her. The silver craft traveling through space, hitting the atmosphere and starting to burn. The being inside, afraid and lost. It doesn’t understand. 

She looks at her sister. 

“You see this too?”

Lindy nods, silent. 

Laurie steps forward. 

“Who are you?”

Another image. A planet, thousands of light years away. Another world, one full of clouds like the one in front of them. And others...changing, halfway through to different forms. And one small cloud, who couldn’t do it fast enough. A runt. Placed in a capsule and sent off to the far reaches of the galaxy. Shame, rejection. Loss.

Laurie holds still and lets the cloud surround the skin of her hand. 

And in front of the two of them, it attempted to change. 

Attempted. 

The specks of the cloud swirl and swarm, disassembling and reassembling, like magic. 

Unfortunately, what appeared in front of the two was a lumpy mishapen figure about the size of a young teenager with solid black eyes and hair the color of sunburned skin over its entire form. It stood on two legs, but just barely. 

When it opened its mouth, all that came out were squeaks. 

Lindy can’t stops herself, she giggles, clapping her hands over her mouth. 

Another image washes over their minds, one of embarrassment. 

“Oh, I’m sorry” Lindy says, hands still over her face, “Not quite? Do you need...more samples or information to get it right?”.

Part of the figure dissolves again, this time dancing around Lindy’s hands and face before trying to shape itself again. 

It looks better this time, normal brown eyes and a less lumpy body. It still has the hair problem. 

When it opens its mouth this time, actual words come out. 

“Need...rest”. 

Laurie looks at her sister, then says. 

“You can sleep in the barn, follow us”. 

Halfway back to the yard, Lindy whispers, 

“All of Dad’s radio stuff is in there”.

“He’s not back until next week, we’ll figure something else by then.”

The barn on the Murphy’s property was old, with peeling paint and only a few pieces of hay still left in the loft. It hadn’t been used for livestock in years, since they had leased it to the Collins to keep two of their horses when the twins were in kindergarten. They had moved to Kentucky, the extra money the boarding had brought was gone, and the barn had been a glorified shed ever since. 

One side of the floor was cluttered with yard tools, and the other held the table with Mr. Murphy’s HAM radio set. There was a rope ladder leading up to the hayloft, where Lindy still often went when she wanted to be alone. 

Lindy grabbed onto the ladder and had scrambled halfway up before she realized the alien wasn’t following her. 

“Like me” she says, slowly climbing back down, carefully placing her hands and feet. 

“You go first now” she says when her feet are back on the ground, holding out the rope ladder. 

The new form, thankfully has the muscle control and balance to climb the ladder, and Lindy and Laurie follow it up. 

“You can sleep up here” Laurie says, opening and laying out the tarp folded in the corner. 

Another mind flash comes to the two of them. Searching for words it seems. Concepts reaching, not quite connecting with the thoughts they mean. 

Laurie leans over into the corner under the tarp and pulls out Lindy’s dusty old transistor radio and turns it on. 

“Listen, this should help you with our English. We’ll come back tomorrow...see if you can get the shapeshifting thing better”. 

Just as she was putting her foot on the ladder to climb back down, Lindy asks. 

“The mind thing? Is that just, like talking for you or can you see what we’re thinking?”

An image, one of a ball. It sits, then it’s pushed. 

“Oh, oh, so you can only see our thoughts if we let you? Is that right?”

A brief flash of the affirmative. 

Then another of a warm, somewhat bashful feeling. 

Laurie laughs. 

“In English, that’s called gratitude. You show people you’re grateful by saying thank you”. 

The twins climb back down the ladder and make their way out of the barn, shutting the door behind them. 

It was nearly ten o’clock and the house was quiet. The younger children had all retired to bed, and Annie wouldn’t be back from her job at the diner until after it closed up. Mother had taken to retiring early with Father gone, the home’s existence as a farmhouse seemingly turning it’s matriarch into an early riser. 

Both girls changed into their pajamas and crawled into their bunk beds silently. The moon was right outside their window, casting a light inside the small room. 

On the bottom bunk, Laurie quietly whispered to her sister above her,  
“What are we going to do about her...he...it?”

“I don’t know” Lindy replies. “But I’m really excited to find out”.


End file.
